[Haskell-cafe] Re: Lists and monads

[wren ng thornton]

Kevin Jardine wrote:
> But as I said, that is just an example. I keep wanting to apply the
> usual list tools but find that they do not work inside a monad. I find
> myself wishing that f (m [a]) just automatically returned m f([a])

Are you looking for these?

     import Data.Traversable as T
     T.sequence :: (T.Traversable t, Monad m) => t (m a) -> m (t a)
     T.mapM :: (T.Traversable t, Monad m) => (a -> m b) -> t a -> m (t b)
     -- N.B. T.mapM ~ (T.sequence . fmap)

> without me needing to do anything but I expect that there are reasons
> why that is not a good idea.

Not all functors can be distributed over arbitrary monads, so "not a 
good idea" is more like "not always possible" or "here be dragons" 
(fluffy, intriguing, and pretty dragons to be sure; but probably deeper 
than the answer you were looking for).

In addition to Applicative, the Traversable and Foldable classes should 
be key tools in your toolbox. They take a number of functions typically 
restricted to lists and generalize them to different functors, often 
with Applicatives or Monads involved. The Typeclassopedia should have 
more on them.

-- 
Live well,
~wren